


the parting glass

by monstermash



Series: the hand in the garden [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 23:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9407213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monstermash/pseuds/monstermash
Summary: But since it falls unto my lotThat I should rise and you should not





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is just what Yasha did during the two and a half years Charon and Dogmeat were gone.
> 
> Yasha has got some issues about being left behind

Charon and Dogmeat have been gone for all of an hour, left with the blonde ghoul, and Yasha is already a nervous wreck. From what he’s heard about her from Charon and what glimpses he’s caught himself she seems to be very untrustworthy. He’s already chewed his bottom lip raw from his unease.

Ugh, this isn’t like him at all. Being out in the wastes has changed him from how he had been back in the vault. Looking back on how he used to be compared to now he had been very… cold hearted, to put it lightly.

Of course he had been something resembling kind and warm (to the best of his abilities at the time) to Amata and Jonas back then (Amata’s words after she became Overseer about how he was no longer emotionally stunted comes to mind). Yasha remembers his father telling him how he had been like that too when he was younger; charismatic and charming but emotionally distant, until he had met Catherine.

His father’s words about how they’re both the kind of people who have their hearts outside their body make sense now.

It had scared Yasha at first, at how vulnerable it made him. He’d seen how devastated his father had been, and it had been years since his mother died, so the thought of that happening to him someday had made him reserved in his affections towards others.

So of course Yasha had sent his heart and his dog off into the wasteland with a dangerous individual for an indeterminate amount of time; oh how he was mentally kicking himself, he should’ve gone with them.

Sighing in frustration, Yasha flops back onto their mattress and glares at the metal ceiling, feels the need to do something to distract himself from the thrum underneath his skin.

After a week has passed since the ghouls and Dogmeat left, his Pip-Boy beeps with a new radio frequency; an emergency signal for the Bailey’s Crossroads.

Yasha is up and gathering his equipment and out the door within minutes.

\---

Honestly Yasha should’ve seen the huge red flag that was “if you die in the simulation, you die in real life,” but he was, at that point, desperate for a distraction from the worry gnawing at his mind.

Now he wishes he hadn’t answered that damn distress signal. Anchorage was cold, so, so cold. Yasha thinks that if a simulation bullet doesn’t kill him, the simulated weather definitely will. The snow had been beautiful at first; his first time seeing it and he had been mesmerized but now it only left an ominous feeling in his gut.

The once pure white snow became stained red from those who fell in combat.

Of course, this is just a simulation, none of these are actual people (though if they were they had died two centuries ago anyway, this shouldn’t be bothering him but it does).

Yasha is no stranger to killing, he lives in the wasteland for fuck's sake, but he is definitely not soldier material; even Benji can see it and he’s a simulation. This whole ordeal makes him wonder how Charon could’ve stood to be one (he must’ve been better at following orders and rules than Yasha is).

Benji seems to take Yasha’s reckless nature in stride though, oddly fond of him and it makes Yasha wonder if this is what it’s like to have siblings.

Yasha knows he won’t miss Anchorage when this is over, but he knows he’ll miss Benji, a man who is made up of ones and zeroes but has become like a brother to him.

\---

“Have you got anyone waiting for you back home?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’ve never seen you writing any letters like the other soldiers, so it made me curious.”

Yasha takes a moment to think of an answer. He knows that it doesn’t matter what he tells Benji, but he can’t bring himself to lie to the man.

“What about you? Got anyone waiting for you?”

Benji arches an eyebrow at Yasha’s obvious avoidance, but answers anyway.

“Yeah, I do. My parents, my brothers, and my fiancé. So let me ask again, you got anyone waiting for you back home? Parents? Family? Someone special?”

Yasha swallows thickly before answering.

“No, uh, no parents waiting for me. But I have a dog and a… husband back home.”

Okay so he and Charon weren’t married, hadn’t said any vows, but as far as Yasha was concerned, now that he thought about it, they were as good as.

Answering Benji truthfully seems to be a good thing, because the Sergeant beams at him and asks about Charon and talks about his own love back home in Ohio. The others from their team eventually join in, one by one, all talking about their own loved ones.

It’s nice and Yasha forgets for a moment that none of this is really real.

\---

They did it, it was over. General Jingwei lay dead at their feet and the other soldiers all froze, except for Benji, who was congratulating him.

Fuck, this was the end and Yasha was going to be alone again. He could feel tears welling up behind his eyes, but did his best to hold them back, his frame shaking with the effort of it.

Benji noticed this, of course he did, Benji always noticed everything, and smiled sympathetically at him.

“Hey kid, no need to tear up. You’re going home, yeah? Back home to your husband and your dog?”

“What about you? What happens to you now?”

“Aw, worried about little old me? Well, I’ll probably go back into a kind of sleep mode until the simulation gets reactivated.”

“I’m gonna miss you.”

“I’m going to miss you too, kid. Don’t forget about me, okay?”

Yasha can feel the hot trail of tears on his cheeks and knows that if he tries to say anything else his voice is going to crack, so he settles for nodding his head. The simulation begins to fade around them and when Benji himself begins to fade away he gives Yasha a grin and lazy salute goodbye.

When Yasha comes out from being under he can feel the dampness on his cheeks and the hollowness he feels in his chest from the loss of Benji is like if Amata died; the man wasn’t real, may not have even existed, but he sure wormed his way into the handful of people that Yasha genuinely cares for.

Fuck, losing Benji was like being gutted. Yasha doesn’t want to know what it would be like to lose Charon.

\---

When he gets back to Megaton he knows he must be a grim sight if the way the townspeople give him a wide berth (even Sheriff Simms keeps his distance for the first couple days) is any indication. 

The first thing he does when he gets back into town is buy a shot at Moriarty's; the parting glass he and Benji didn't get a chance to have.

For the next few weeks Yasha doesn’t want to go on any kind of wild adventure like he usually would. Instead he spends his time helping out the kids of Little Lamplight, well mostly helping Lucy obtain Buffout and getting “strange meat” (it’s people. Of course it’s people, but at least the kids aren’t eating it. At least Little Lamplight isn’t a miniature Andale) for Eclair’s fungus.

MacCready appears to be incredulous that Yasha would willingly get them supplies for free, which makes MacCready even more suspicious of him. You’d think by now that the Mayor wouldn’t be so wary of him (considering that he and Charon had completely destroyed Paradise Falls when rescuing the captured Little Lamplighters), but Yasha knows that, for one reason or another, all of the Little Lamplighters have little to no trust for “Mungos” so he’s not offended.

When Little Lamplight is well stocked for the foreseeable future, Yasha bids them farewell (with a promise to Lucy to keep an eye out for any more Buffout, there’s never enough of the stuff for them no matter how much they scavenge) and heads for the Potomac.

Once there he finds the Duchess Gambit. 

\---

Ugh, his head hurts and nothing seems right. How bad must his karma be to deserve this?

"Tsk. Tsk. Walked right into another trap. Exactly how stupid are you?"

To be fair, Yasha probably deserved that one. He should’ve seen how bad of an idea this was, but usually Charon would say something if he felt that an idea was a bad one. But Charon left. Where did he go again? Is he coming back?

Yasha can’t remember, because of that stupid punga fruit. Honestly this is the last time Yasha listens to cultists, nothing good ever comes out if it.

"This is one situation you're not going to be able to fight your way out of."

Ain’t that the truth. These weird Bubbleheads don’t seem too bad, but they’re not very helpful stating the obvious.

"Keep it up, you're almost there... wherever 'there' may be... probably nowhere."

Yasha doesn’t know either but he hopes “there” means wherever Charon and Dogmeat are; he really, really misses them. Hasn’t seen or heard from them in months. He hopes they come back soon because he hates being alone and hates that he doesn’t know if they’re alright.

"Isn't it funny how everyone you get close to ends up leaving?"

Okay, _ouch_. What is your deal, Bubblehead? But fuck if there isn’t at least some kernel of truth in that. His dad died, Amata banned him from the vault and doesn’t have a lot of time to message him over Pipboy, and well, Charon and Dogmeat did technically leave him. But they’re coming back, right?

Right?

"This doesn't look right, not right at all."

 _"Thanks for point out the obvious yet again, Bubbleheads,"_ Yasha thinks as he rolls his eyes. Sure, everything’s upside down, but this isn’t Yasha’s first rodeo; he’s hallucinated some weird stuff while being exposed one way or another to questionable substances before and this doesn’t even make his top ten.

"Blech. If my kid looked like that, I'd abandon it too."

Well this definitely makes it to his top ten; a skeleton labeled ‘Mom’ on a hospital bed surrounded by birthday balloons and a Bubblehead placed between the boney legs. When Yasha picks up the Bubblehead to throw it into the distance the sound of a heart monitor flat lining startles him so badly that he drops the Bubblehead and leaves immediately.

"Dead mother, life in a post-nuclear Wasteland and not a friend in it. Yeah, you aren’t exactly blessed." 

Okay, Yasha takes it back, these Bubbleheads are weird and mean and he can do without them and their shitty attitudes.

"Congratulations, my boy, you are going to pull through and everything will be right as rain."

Pull through? Pull through what? Mr. Break isn’t making any sense and Yasha feels a sharp sting in his head.

"No, no. Don't try to get up yet. You'll only hurt yourself."

Get up? Isn’t he already up? How can you get up from being up?

The bomb behind Mr. Break goes off and Yasha throws his arms up to shield his face from the blindingly bright light.

\---

“Oh please, this is nothing compared to what you’ve done. You’ve killed far more than I have.”

“You cut open my head and stole some of my brain!”

“Think of it as retribution if it’ll make you feel better.”

“No, that does not make me feel better! At all!”

“Well that’s too bad.”

Tobar pulls a gun and oh, he really shouldn’t have done that, because Yasha has been itching to get more than even with this creep.

\---

Yasha’s time at Point Lookout has not been great; it’s no fun settling a feud between a pre-war spy ghoul and a crazy brain if there’s no one there to share it with. It has been months since Charon and Dogmeat left and he hopes that they’re finally back because he’s so tired of being alone.

He sighs and leans his elbows on the steamboat’s railing, burying his head in his hands, fingers gripping strands of hair tightly.

Pushing himself off the railing, Yasha pulls out a cigarette and thinks about how he never wants to set foot in Point Lookout ever again, but he knows he’ll be back. He did promise Kenny that he’d come visit him after all (Yasha had offered to take Kenny with him, back to the Capital, but the kid had declined, said he was fine in his cave. Yasha wonders what it is about caves that seem so appealing to wasteland kids).

He regrets not being able to put his brain back together, but there aren’t any Auto-Docs and the tiny piece of gray matter has been in that jar of whatever for who knows how long.

Nadine seems happy though - someone should be after all of this - with her newly acquired boat and enough punga fruit to last two lifetimes. When they dock on the Potomac Nadine insists on having a parting glass (she'd been experimenting on making punga rum; Yasha dumped the foul smelling contents of his glass over the side when she wasn't looking). She offers to take him to Rivet City if he wants to have his head looked at, but he politely declines.

Right now, all Yasha wants is home, preferably with a certain ghoul waiting for him.

\---

Megaton hasn’t changed too much, there are a few new residents (a few are awed that _the_ Lone Wanderer lives in their town), but he doesn’t stop to greet them, too eager to go home and see if Charon and Dogmeat have returned.

When Yasha opens the door to their home the only one to greet him is Wadsworth who informs him that Charon and Dogmeat have still yet to return. He swears he can hear the sound of his heart cracking just a little bit more.

Yasha wants to cry – shouldn’t have got his hopes up like that, stupid, _stupid_ – but he manages to reign himself in.

This time Yasha spends a year in Megaton – helping build the town up, helping make its economy (and in turn the rest of the wasteland’s economy) prosper, helps build a school, establishing trade with Vault 101 once they’re finally able to periodically open the vault and with Underworld, he visits Kenny a couple of times, amongst other things that need to be done – when the loneliness starts clawing its way back into him and lodges itself in his rib cage.

Yasha tells Wadsworth that if anyone comes looking for him he’s gone on business and leaves Megaton again.

At this point Charon and Dogmeat have been gone for two years and Yasha no longer wonders when they’re coming back – he now wonders if they’re ever coming back.

\---

Yasha wanders for a long time (might as well live up to the title of Lone Wanderer) when he finds The Pitt. Just seeing the silhouette of the ruined city turns the blood in his veins to ice and makes his mouth dry. Something is wrong here, he should leave, but he does not. Instead he continues onward, following a distress signal.

Into The Pitt.

\---

Yasha hears whispers amongst the slaves about the Cure, but none will elaborate. Midea only tells him that he’ll know it when he sees it. Why can’t anyone in the wasteland speak plainly for once?

He doesn’t have any more time to think about what the Cure could possibly be once he enters The Hole for round one.

In fact, he doesn’t have much time to think of anything except to survive once the toxic barrels are released.

\---

“You're going up against Gruber. He's one of the only slaves to win in the Hole. There's only ever been... what? Three? I guess he got a taste for blood. But unfortunately for you, he's got a pretty decent gun. So, odds are, this is the last time you and I will be talking.”

Yasha only grunts in response as he finishes taping a wound closed; he’ll have to stitch it later, but stitches right now won’t help him in this fight. He can’t be worried about popping stitches while trying to kill a man who is far better equipped than he is.

Faydra isn’t so bad, but she’s still a slaver, so Yasha tolerates her at best though he keeps that to himself. He’s not under any delusions here; he’s still a slave to these people, no better than dirt.

He also thinks he might be dissociating because he can feel himself slip back into who he used to be back in the Vault. Cold, detached, uncaring. 

Yasha remembers Butch telling him one night at the Muddy Rudder how he found it funny that Yasha changed as a person backwards; he should’ve started out as a decent person in the Vault and become cold and ruthless in the wasteland.

He told Butch there was a reason for that; there already were enough cold and ruthless people in the wasteland, it didn’t need another. (Of course there was also how Charon, who had been trained to be cold and ruthless, still tried to do the decent thing even when he had been under contract, from what he has told Yasha of his past, and that… that really spoke to Yasha.)

But here, this place, The Pitt itself seems to make him who he used to be and he doesn’t want to be that.

Yasha idly wonders how things might’ve been had he not changed; would Benji have still become like a brother to him, would he have even offered to take Kenny to the Capital, would he have even given Charon his contract?

He has to calm his harsh breathing at the last thought. Yasha knows what he would’ve done if he had still been that cold hearted boy in the vault and it makes him disgusted with his younger self.

 _“Enough introspection, you’ve got your freedom to win,”_ Yasha scolds himself as he pushes away from the supply table and towards the arena once more.

\---

Yasha finally finds out what the Cure is; a baby girl named Marie.

She coos and babbles at him when her tiny fist closes around his finger.

“You think you can hold me with one tiny hand? How foolish,” he coos back at her with a lopsided smile. Marie gives him a toothless grin and more babbling.

“I’m surprised she’s taken a liking to you; Marie is usually so quiet,” Sandra says from where she stands just off to his left. Yasha looks at her before carefully removing his finger from Marie’s grasp.

“What can I say? I’m a likeable guy.”

\---

Ashur asks him to kill Wernher to stop a slave uprising. This leaves Yasha at an impasse; he can’t in good conscience side with slavers (even though Ashur says that the slaves will be free once a cure has been made, Yasha doubts the claim), but he can also tell that the slavers are the only stabilizing force in The Pitt and taking them out will only cause the ruined city to descend into chaos.

“I need to think about this,” Yasha answers. Ashur does not look happy about this but concedes.

“I understand. Try not to take too long.”

\---

Yasha sits atop an old ruined building, legs dangling over the edge.

An important decision has been left to him (all important decisions seem to be left for him) and his nose wrinkles at the possible outcomes for either.

His mind keeps going around and around in circles as he finds his gaze being drawn by the wasteland on the horizon. Yasha doesn’t see anything out there, except for what he thinks might be something moving in the distance, but it’s too far to tell. Yasha’s heart aches every time he looks to the possible movement in the far distance and he wonders if it’s Charon and Dogmeat.

Yasha snorts at himself, how foolish he’s being. He has to decide the fate of The Pitt and here he is getting distracted like some sort of lovesick teenager.

Eventually whatever it is that’s moving out there leaves and he’s no longer distracted by it and the oppressive feeling of longing.

It is only when Yasha hears explosions and screaming, when he sees The Pitt on fire that he comes down from the rooftop.

He is unsure of where to go, but when he sees Haven burning he knows his destination; if nothing else he needs to make sure that Marie is safe.

\---

Her crib is empty and a dying Sandra tells him what happened.

“Promise me… promise me that you’ll kill anyone who has dared to even lay a finger on her. Promise me!”

He promises.

\---

Yasha should’ve known that Wernher didn’t really care about the slaves, only used them to get the cure and he honestly should’ve known something was up with Midea based on her name alone.

With a gun and a silencer, Yasha ends Wernher and Midea while they sleep. 

Yasha takes Marie with him, spirits her away from the burning and rioting city.

Maybe now, when the flames are doused and the ashes settle, the Pitt will die once and for all.

\---

The road home is long and tiring, but well worth it when he no longer has to constantly look over his shoulder to make sure that they weren’t followed.

This time, Yasha doesn’t even pause outside the front door, wondering if Charon and Dogmeat are finally home. He knows they aren’t. 

He wonders when he gave up hope on ever seeing them again.

\---

With the addition of Marie in his life, Yasha had surprisingly little trouble adjusting. He stays close to Megaton now; the farthest he travels is to Rivet City or Little Lamplight and occasionally Underworld.

It’s been two and a half years and it still feels like there’s a gaping hole in his chest.

Taking care of Marie usually distracts him from it. Yasha loves the little baby as if she were his own, hell at this point, for all intents and purposes, Marie is his daughter now. He refuses to be a barely there parent like his own dad was.

Yasha will be a better parent, no matter how much his chest aches to see marred and cratered skin and a certain shade of red hair again.

He pours himself a shot - a parting glass to the love of his life who is unlikely to return - in an attempt to say goodbye, to move on from him. His hands shake so badly that he has to put the glass down. He can't do it, can't say goodbye to Charon.

This is one parting glass Yasha can't bring himself to take.

\---

Yasha is sitting on the metal platform that holds their house, watching the sun rise. He likes to take some time for himself in the morning, before Marie wakes. This is the only time of the day that Yasha will allow himself to think of Charon and Dogmeat, allows himself to hope that at the very least the two of them are alive and safe out there, before he makes himself put memories of them away. 

He’s putting out his cigarette when he hears barking from behind him and barely catches himself from going over the side as Dogmeat barrels into his side.

“Dogmeat?” Yasha says incredulous, because it has been so long since he hoped to see her or… his heart stops and his mind grinds to a halt. Yasha shoots to his feet and races around the corner of the house, heart suddenly rabbiting in his chest and there he is.

There’s Charon.

Yasha studies him for a moment, making sure this is real – that he’s real – before holding onto him tightly, burying his face in the side of Charon’s neck.

“I missed you,” he tells the ghoul, though it’s muffled.

He can feel Charon press his mouth against the top of his head and grunt in agreement.

It is good to have his heart with him again.


End file.
